A comparison of four techniques for measuring central adiposity in postpartum adolescents

To develop a reliable office technique for measuring central body fat in postpartum adolescents, we compared: first, a direct sonographic measurement of visceral adiposity to measurements of visceral and subcutaneous abdominal adiposity by computed tomography (CT); and second, skinfold caliper and sonographic measurements of subcutaneous adipose tissue distribution to CT measurements of visceral and subcutaneous abdominal adiposity.

Postpartum adipose tissue distribution was assessed in 15 teenagers by measuring the thickness of the subcutaneous fat at six body sites with skinfold calipers and ultrasound. Visceral adiposity was measured directly by ultrasound and CT. Taking the CT measurements as the standards, Pearson correlations and regression analyses were used to compare ultrasound measurement of visceral adiposity and the skinfold caliper and sonographic measurements of subcutaneous adipose tissue distribution.

All of the adiposity measurements correlated significantly with the two CT measurements. The correlations between the ultrasound and the two CT measurements of abdominal adiposity were weaker than the correlations between the skinfold caliper and the sonographic determinations of subcutaneous adiposity and the two CT measurements of abdominal adiposity. Multivariate analyses identified the sonographic determination of subcutaneous adiposity at the costal site as the best independent predictor of central adiposity.

The results of this study do not support the validity of ultrasound measurement of visceral adiposity as a measure of central adiposity in postpartum teenagers, but do suggest that sonographic determinations of subcutaneous adiposity could be useful for conducting epidemiological studies of the metabolic sequelae of gestational weight gain in this high-risk population of young women.